Wednesday, April 18, 2007

A Little Portrait

Here's a portrait I painted recently of me and my lovely wife Claudia. Its been cold and rainy here in Toronto, so I drew this one up in anticipation of the coming spring weather. We often go walking through the alley ways in Toronto together while I look for reference for my paintings and I thought it'd make a nice scene for a portrait of the two of us. As with most of the other two-tone pieces I've posted here, I painted this one up with coloured ink markers on watercolour paper.

For this drawing, in answer to the occasional emails I get asking about my process, I thought I'd scan the painting during various stages to give an idea of how I go about working in two-tone with markers. So for those interested, I've compiled the various scans and made a few notes to explain how I work, which you can see on the right. You can also see the pencil drawing I did the painting from at the bottom.

And of course, I have to thank Claudia for scanning and colour correcting this one for me. Being a designer and art-director herself, she's a photoshop whiz and often scans and cleans up my work for me...and she did a great job on this one!

Chris: thanks, Chris. I actually kinda inspired to do this from seeing all the very helpful tutorials you've posted on your blog. Though, I have no idea how to do all the cool video tutorials you've done!

Mike: thanks, Mike. My answers are; 1) no, my eyes don't really hurt from the light table -- I use a low wattage bulb, so its no worse than looking at a tv screen and 2)yes, I used to do the process digitally, a long, long time ago. However, I found it took longer and was also very very boring and tedious to work that way.

Dominic: thanks, Dom. The background in this one is actually made up, but I was kinda thinking of alleys near Harbord and Ossington...so it's almost in the same area.

Brian: Thanks, dude. You know I dig your work lots, right? As for the sizes, most of the stuff I do is small, and this one was about 10 1/2" x 5" approx. I used to work smaller when I worked with "real" brushes, but the markers/brushpens I use work better at a slightly bigger size.

Anonymous: my method is to leave a trail of chocolate pocky sticks to my door...

Hatem: thanks! I thought about doing these digitally, but I can't reproduce some of the more organic textures and strokes I need through software. At least, not at a speed that makes it worth while.

Please note that I do not do accept any private commissions (comic character sketches, family portraits, etc). I also do not sell any prints of my work online. Sketches and prints can usually be purchased at events that I am personally attending. Thanks for your understanding.

Upcoming Appearances

I'm looking forward to making my first appearance at the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival this year. Should be a fun time - I'll be doing sketches, selling some prints and trying to enjoy the maritime weather!